


The Mage of No Value

by SilverGlass83



Series: Under the Light of the Three Moons [1]
Category: Dragonlance - Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman
Genre: Don't copy to another site, First Meetings, First Steps of Destiny, Gen, One Shot, POV Second Person, Reader-Insert, Started out as a writing exercise, Turned out alright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2020-09-22
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:41:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverGlass83/pseuds/SilverGlass83
Summary: You are but a mere novice.You have no family, no past, and no allegiance to any god or mortal.So when Raistlin Majere, Master of the Past and Present, requests a second apprentice, it comes as no surprise that the Conclave chose to send you.
Series: Under the Light of the Three Moons [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984229
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8





	The Mage of No Value

The trees standing before you are dark and evil, the death that radiates off them chills you to the core as you pull your cloak tighter around yourself in a futile attempt to find warmth. You've read about this Grove and how it differs from the one you are familiar with.

The enchanted trees you've encountered around Wayreth are magical in the way that it 'hides' the tower from anyone who was not deemed worthy to be there. That forest appears suddenly to those seeking it and only to those deemed worthy to enter by the tower's Master. Thus no one really knows where that tower actually exists.

That kind of magic is far beyond your understanding as of now, but you wish to learn and perhaps, someday, you will come to know those secrets.

Perhaps someday _you_ will be the Master...

But first you must survive the obstacle before you; first, you must gain enough knowledge to take your own Test of High Sorcery and choose your role within the world of wizards and gods.

However, even before that first step, you need to enter this magical Grove. A task that seems impossible as despair fills you.

Like the forest around Wayreth the trees before you are enchanted, but this enchantment has become a curse. Called the Shoikan Grove, the ancient oaks above you are far, far more terrible to behold in person than anything written on mere parchment can relay to even the most overactive imagination such as yours.

Twisted and malevolent, the trunks and limbs stretch above your head, blotting out the stars and the moons. At one point in history, these same magical trees only emitted enough fear to dissuade anyone from coming too close and finding their way to the tower at the Grove's heart. Now the fear is debilitating, all-consuming, maddening, and you feel as though your own heart will explode at any moment from sheer terror.

You stand there, at the very end of the path, clutching to your breast a nightjewel, a magical artifact that you were told will allow you safe passage through this dreaded place. It is supposed to protect you from the undead that now reside beneath the boughs, it's supposed to negate the curse and ease the suffocating fear...

Looking around yourself into the darkness, you know that there is no way! How can such a small bauble grant you passage through this madness!

Mist hovers along the ground like water, lapping close to your road-scuffed boots but not quite touching you. You hear whispers calling to you, nameless horrors attempting to lure you off the path to meet your doom. Eyes belonging to things unknown glint and gleam at you from within the shadows; they are hungry and eager to drink your blood. For one moment you entertain the thought of wandering off the path, for surely you will never be happy or warm ever again...

You shake your head, ashamed at your momentary lapse of weakness. You've never taken the easy way out, why start now?

Soaring above the treetops, glimpsed through the branches that creak and moan in agony, you can see the Tower rising from the center of the Grove. You had also read that this Tower of High Sorcery was once the most beautiful of the original five. Before the Cataclysm its marble walls were shining white and streaked with red, the minarets on top gleamed like rubies in the sunlight.

But no longer.

Now the Tower is as black and twisted as the trees that surround it. The once ruby domes are cracked and broken, they seem as though they are made of frozen blood, for sunlight no longer touches this place. Now it is called the Doom-spire. Only curses and shadows live within.

Well, not truly, for you were requested by its current Master.

A human mage and his elven, dark elf apprentice live within the Tower alongside only the gods know what. You've heard rumors of spirits and other foul things, worse than what roam the Grove, that haunt the ancient halls of the Tower.

How can one man rule over so much death and despair and still stay sane?

You look around yourself again, your mind racing into a thousand different places – none of them good. What sort of life will you be forced to live within such a place? What kind of things will you see and discover? Do you have it within you to endure this unknown path?

Suddenly, you're not all that sure if fully developing your magic is worth all this...

As your imagination runs rampant you manage to remember how this place came to be in its current state. In the days just prior to the Cataclysm, the Tower was cursed in order to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. It lay dormant and empty for over three hundred years before the one prophesied would finally come and open it.

Master of the Past and Present they call him; he came in the dark of night nigh a year ago and entered alone. Raistlin Majere is his real name, but others whisper that he is more than that. Some say he is possessed, others say he is crazed, while a precious few call him brilliant.

He is to be your Master now and this is almost a more terrifying thought than the Grove that awaits your entry and of the unknown things beyond it. If Raistlin Majere has tamed such nameless horrors, if he has made this place livable, then he must be powerful indeed...

New questions race through your mind: Will this wizard be able to help you, to teach you? Will he find the power inside you that no other has been able to call forth and cultivate to its full potential?

Or will he be your doom?

As if summoned by your inner, panicked musing, a shadow emerges upon the path you have yet to walk down. You watch, heart thudding against the back of your breastbone, as a faint light appears within the gloom. Like a dancing will-o-wisp the cold white light grows stronger and stronger as it nears you and it soon gives form to the shadow that holds it.

It is not a ghoul or some terrible specter of undeath come to drag you to your demise. It is but a man in black robes adorned with powerful magical runes. Slightly hunched, he walks forward slowly and easily, unhampered by the terrors around him as he leans on the staff whose crowning crystal is providing the light illuminating the darkness.

After what feels like an eternity he is finally standing before you. Slightly taller than you, you are forced to look up into his hood when he addresses you.

“You are the one the Conclave sent?” he asks, his voice is soft yet harsh, as if spoken through an irritated throat.

You gulp down the initial shock you feel when you first meet his eyes. They told you about his appearance (warned you more like) but nothing could have prepared you for actually seeing him.

The light from the crystal atop the staff gleams on the side of his gaunt face; shines against the metallic golden sheen that covers him. Gaunt isn't quite the right word for his features though. He is thin, yes, his skin stretched too far over the delicate bones of his face. But you see a hardness there to that visage, a hint of unyielding determination, and in those eyes a burning source of power; those eyes that now hold you trapped in their strange depths.

As golden as his skin, his irises shine at you like a predators' - as mysterious as an owls' and as deadly as a wolfs'. However, it is not the irises that hold you captive, but the pupils. In the shape of hourglasses, those pupils see time as it touches all things and you wonder, for a heartbeat, what you must look like to him, slowly rotting away beneath that gaze.

Are you just one more dead thing within his domain? Just one more mindless wretch to do his bidding?

“Well, are you?” his voice cuts through your inner musings hot like a knife and you jerk back to the present.

“Y, yes,” you manage to mumble through lips numb with fear and uncertainty, for you suddenly wonder if you just answered your own musings from his prompt. You lick your lips and taste salt from the sweat that has beaded along your skin despite the chill that has crept into your bones.

He eyes you up and down, that gaze missing nothing as he dissects you. You know that you're not much to look at and you see this fact reflected back to you in the surface of those mirror-like, cursed eyes.

“You are younger than I expected,” he comments. “No matter though, you should do.”

He pauses for a moment as if waiting for you to speak or ask a question but you cannot seem to find anything to say.

It's all so daunting.

“What am I to call you?” he asks, his voice is now softer, gentler, as if he is attempting to be friendly, to coax you out of the corner like some frightened kitten. But you see through it, the false sense of warmth. You see past the golden facade and catch a glimpse of the calculating mind behind the mask.

You give your name in a voice that is a bit stronger, steadier, for your name is really all you have and speaking it brings you comfort. It is the one constant thread through your life that has led you here to this Tower, to him, to your new Master and to the choices you hope to one day make.

If you prove to be worthy...

If you prove to be strong enough...

He repeats your name back to you, accentuating each syllable with slow deliberateness. He has a particular accent that you try for a moment to place before you recall that he grew up in Solace in the lands known as Abanasinia, far from where you were born but close to where the Tower of Wayreth tends to appear.

“I see that you wear plain robes,” he comments, still using that falsely gentle tone as he eyes your mouse-colored attire. The cloth you drape over yourself can hardly be called a robe, for it is more like a heavy shawl. “You have not yet chosen a path?” he adds, meaning that - though you've studied magic - a novice usually adorns themselves in the color of their teacher until such a time their own Test of High Sorcery is taken.

Wearing a color besides one of the three moons means one of two things: You are a renegade or you are blessed with some magic, but haven't taken your Test and do not give allegiance to any path.

In your case it is both and none. You've had teachers, but none kept you around for long. You've wanted to take your Test, but _they_ say you are not ready.

So you walk the world alone, until _he_ asked for someone like you.

“No,” you reply. Because it's true. “You asked for a blank slate, Master, so they sent me...”

He nods slightly but the movement is swallowed by the depths of his dark hood. “And who is this blank slate before me? What _truly_ is your purpose here?” he asks now in a voice that sends a shiver of fear down your spine.

Though soft and whispering, you know that voice of his holds great power. You sense it then, billowing off his thin frame, the magic you so desperately wish to understand and make your own. It's so thick in the air now that you can almost taste it. The magic hums around you, wafts up to you on the mists and through the trees just as detectable as the scent of dried roses and other spell components that surround the both of you.

“I am here to learn, Master,” you say. “I am here in hopes that you will help me find my path.”

“Why would they send you? What makes _you_ so special?”

You shrug. “I'm a mage of no value,” you reply and even though you try to hide it, a small bit of bitterness edges your words. This is the litany they have sung to you for years: Mage of no value, mage with no purpose – not even the gods want you...

The corner of his lip tugs up in a hint of a smile and you catch a glimpse of something in those strange eyes. Was it understanding? Pity? Compassion? Loathing?

You're not sure, for it is gone just as quickly as you thought you saw it.

“We shall see,” he murmurs softly, the sound sending another shiver down your spine.

But this time it is one of anticipation.

With that, he turns and begins down the path back to the Tower.

You hesitate but a moment, your eyes are drawn up to the sky and the blackened spire now illuminated by the moons from which your fledgling magic comes. As if to refute the litany you've been told nearly all your life, the moons suddenly unveil themselves from behind the clouds and you feel the gaze of the three gods upon you.

Solinari, the white moon shines brightly and coldly, his rays offering a path for those of good. Lunitari, the red moon, makes the red streaks in the black marble on the tower seem to glow and glitter. Her path upholds the edicts of neutrality, of the center path. And there, somehow, you catch the edge of the hidden dark moon, that of Nuitari, just along the outline of the other two. His path is that of darkness, of what some term 'evil', but you know that there is purpose in that path.

Balance must always be upheld.

Your heart hasn't chosen yet. You don't consider yourself wholly 'good', nor 'neutral' or even 'evil'. You are just you right now, bathing in the combined light of the three moons and surrounded by magic you long to make yours.

On top of the rush of awe that fills you, you find that you are humbled that the gods have shown themselves to you, however fleeting their divine notice.

You know in that moment that they are all there, the three gods of the arcane, and they are watching, waiting, for you to take your first steps, waiting to see what path you will walk. They wait to see if you truly are 'the mage of no value' that you keep telling yourself you are.

For the first time in your life you catch yourself wondering if you really _can_ be something more than what they've told you.

What will you make of your life?

What path will you walk?

Your heart thrills inside your chest with excitement unlike anything you have felt in a long, long while. The mist has parted behind your new Master as he walks down the path leading to the Tower as if showing you the way.

Your destiny, your future. All you have to do is take that first step...

***

Raistlin Majere doesn't look back to see if you have followed.

You will. He knows it.

He saw the gleam in your eyes, the insatiable hunger for knowledge, the will to defy what you've been told your whole life.

'A mage of no value' - that is what you called yourself. He sneers within his hood, the expression hidden from all eyes except the gods above and the dead within the Grove.

That sneer turns into a small smile of satisfaction when he hears the first echoing crunch of your boot upon the stone path as you follow him into the unknown. The branches above him shiver when he whispers again:

“We shall see...”

**Author's Note:**

> So I've fallen in love with a wonderful Castlevania fic called 'Pitiful Creatures' by Flowyen (here on AO3) that is written in Second Person POV and it inspired me to give this type of writing a go. Originally I did it as a challenge to myself just to see if I liked it. Lo and behold I ended up with something not too shabby, at least in my mind.  
> Anyway it was fun to try something new.  
> Hope you enjoyed it! :)  
> Edit: Of course it needed a collage so I added it after posting :p < Already changed it again after I realized it sort of gave the impression of an eye. Now it should very much look like an eye after I changed it a bit.... hopefully


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